Teenager Pleads Not Guilty in Hate Crime Killing of Gay Dancer
The 17-year-old charged with murder as a hate crime in the fatal stabbing last month of a gay Black dancer at a Brooklyn gas station pleaded not guilty at an arraignment on Friday.
The teenager, Dmitriy Popov, entered the plea in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, where he will be tried as an adult. He faces a possible maximum sentence of 25 years to life in prison if convicted of murder.
The hate crime count could increase any minimum sentence to 20 years from 15. The killing Mr. Popov is accused of committing occurred on July 29, when the dancer, O’Shae Sibley, and a group of friends stopped for gas at a filling station in the Midwood section of Brooklyn while on their way home from the beach, prosecutors said.
As Mr. Sibley, 28, and his friends danced to a Beyoncé song, another group of people began to yell homophobic and anti-Black slurs at them, prosecutors said.
